A bit off topic, but I had the exact same freezing issue with FreeBSD. This mailing list post proved to be the solution for me: http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/hackers/2008-05/msg00318.html
It seems to boil down to FreeBSD still loading the atkbd driver even if you only have a USB keyboard connected. Pressing capslock/numlock/scrolllock causes some delays doing this. The solution for me was to add 'hint.atkbd.0.flags="0x01"' to my/boot/device.hints. This resolved the problem entirely for me. Hope this helps.